A cold day in the city, what to do? Hungry... What sounds good? Something for the soul you say? How about warming up with a big bowl of Chicken Soup? Here's an amazingly easy way to make it. Cheap, easy, and good for you!

Step 1: Ingredients

The list is simple, and easily customizable to your taste. So this is just my preference.

One Carrot
2 Potatoes
A couple of Celery Sticks
One Turnip
One Onion (I used a Bermuda Onion, in hindsight, Vidalia would have been better...)
Chicken (Freezer burned chicken is usable again!)
Salt and Pepper to taste
Water

Total Cost: $6.50

Step 2: Preparation

There's really not a lot to this. Just put the chicken in the water, and slowly cook it. This is going to serve two purposes. We're cooking the chicken, AND making a stock for the soup. So, cook the chicken for a while. It's done when it's falling off the bone.

For this recipe, you don't even have thaw the meat! Fresh from the freezer!

Step 3: De-Boning

So, now that the meat is cooked, we can remove the bones. We left it on the bone to cook it to get the flavor from the bones. Yes, there's flavor in the bone. No, we don't eat them. Simply tear off the meat. Whatever method you like best for this is fine. The jerked chicken also adds to the visual pleasing part of this recipe, but yo can cut it up, or use scissors even, Scissors work really well for this. Once done, return the chicken to your stock. The bones, now softened from boiling, can go into the compost bin.

Step 4: The Veggies!

Not much to this process really, just chop veggies. Some people like to skin the vegetables, personally, I don't. So many vitamins and minerals in the skins of some veggies! So, for this, I just chopped the stuff into bite-sized bits. Toss them in, and let the whole thing simmer. No real science to time on this, just til it's done. I had the heat on reeeeeally low, so it took a while.

On a side note, I was also using the warmth from the oven to heat my kitchen/dining area. I wasn't in the rest of the house, so having the heat blast wasn't needed. I like dual purpose...

Step 5: And... We're Done!

Now, it loks like soup. Taste it as you go along, add salt and pepper to taste. You could add bay leaf, oregano, parsley, whatever. The nice thing about this is, it's to your taste. Make it your own! Experiment! I usually add a little Sriracha to it, but then again, I think it's a food group all by itself. Have fun!

One of my favorite parts about this recipe is, it's so low maintenance! You can literally walk away and do other stuff while it simmers. I made some envelopes out of old envelopes while it cooked. And, it gets better with time. Like Italian food, it's better the next day! It freezes! Put it in a tupperware (or an empty butter tub in my case) and bring it to work! Give it to your sick neighbor! I ended up making 13 pounds of food for so little money, so plenty to go around!

Enjoy!